Winnow

winnow (source)
Rice is the staple food of Indonesian, especially those who live in the west and the middle zone. In Indonesia, the cooked rice is called ‘nasi’, while the raw rice is called ‘beras’. The rice is actually the fruit of paddy grains. When it was harvested, sometimes there are still many rice skins (grains) left and mixed with the rice.

Today when I was about cooking the rice, as usual I removed the dirt – small rocks and/or the grains- which are mixed in the rice. Now I don’t use any special tool to sort out the grains from the rice, but it brings memory when I was little I used to love threshing rice by winnowing.

Winnow is a large plate made from woven bamboo. The shape is round with rattan circling ring. When I was still a little kind – and I don’t know since how many years before that – when the rice sold usually still mixed with lots of grains and dirt because the farmers still hadn’t use the modern rice peeler, a lot of people used winnow to clean rice from grains.

The way to do it was by pour small amount of rice on the winnow, then swing that winnow up and down that the rice and the grains are jumping around. The logic is like this: grains are the paddy’s skins – which are very light, so when the grains and the rice are jumping in the air, a small wind would be able to blow the light grains aside and separate it from the rice. I really loved did that because the sound produced when the rice was dancing and jumping around on the winnow sounded like music, moreover if there were many people did that together each with different rhythm, we could really produced ‘the song of the rice’. ^^

Maybe winnowing is still popular in more remote villages or between the farmers. However in the city, most of the people chose to buy really clean rice that no more mixed with grains that they no longer need to thresh the rice. So it turns out the winnow now switching function as a base for serving food. Usually the winnow is used as the ‘plate’ for huge rice cone or various traditional and modern snacks. It is a cheap plate, and of course unique because it is added the traditional sense in the presentation.

[FK]